My current work in progress:

There have been a few questions in the comments about my current cabled project.

Like — how fast can I knit cables? The answer is — a lot slower than straight knitting. I never use a cable needle, so that speeds up the process, but of course the process of twisting a cable takes longer than just straight knitting, so a heavily cabled piece will take significantly longer to knit than straight stockinette.

There are many tutorials available online for cabling without a cable needle, by the way. Google at will.

Another commenter asked about the ruffled look of the bottom band of the piece. It looks ruffled because it is smooshed up a bit on the needle — said ruffling will go away with blocking.

When you are creating a cabled piece, you always need to increase stitches above the bottom band or ribbing because the cable “sucks” the piece in. I did increases to accommodate this, and when I spread the bottom edge out, said ruffling disappears.

Look Ma, no ruffles!

I’ve not made a whole lot of progress since my last blog post. Strangely, spending evenings in a fugue state between sleep and wakefulness is not conducive to knitting. (It was a very busy, intense work-week).

Wednesday’s Book Giveaway

The winner of Quick Knit Flower Frenzy, is Pam Gardner, who has been emailed. To purchase a copy, either in hard- or electronic-format, go to Annie’s Crafts here.

Because I posted just one smallish photo of my current WIP, I thought it might be nice to give you a guided tour of the stitches and cables I am using in this project.

The side “filler” stitch is seed stitch, also known as moss stitch.

I love the look of seed stitch, particularly with a colorway that has some depth to it. This Cormo yarn is naturally slightly heathered and I think it looks wonderful in seed stitch!

There are five different cable motifs in play.

The first one is a simple 2 by 2 twist.

I am using these as filler cables to frame the bigger motifs and am mirroring the direction of the twist. The pattern repeats every 4 rows. Across the back of the sweater, this cable is used 6 times.

The next is slightly more complex.

It is still a 2 by 2 twist, but it has a couple of purls stitches as “filler” in the middle to make it stand out more, and the pattern repeats every 8 rows. I am using it twice across the back of the sweater.

Next up is a cable/seed stitch combo.

This is a mirrored cable twist every 8 rows and the middle is filled with seed stitch. This works nicely by “drawing in” the filler seed stitch on the sides. I’m using this motif 4 times: twice on each side of the center motif.

Next, a more complex cable — a braid.

This cable is a lot simpler to work than it looks: the pattern repeats every 8 rows and it is pretty easy to follow. You are moving stitches on every right-side row and after working it a couple of times it becomes obvious what needs to be done next. I’m working it twice, once on each side of the back.

The most complex cable motif is actually made up of two different cables: the outer wavy lines and an internal mirrored twist.

The mirrored twist has a 4-row repeat and the outer way lines form the longest repeat in the whole design: 16 rows.

Put them all together and you get this:

I mentioned that I have memorized the pattern. Looking at the piece as a whole, it looks a little overwhelming, but when you break it down into the different components, there is nothing too difficult to remember.

Each motif’s repeat is based on multiples of 4: I have 4-row, 8-row, and 16-row motifs in my design. For me, this makes the whole thing much easier to memorize. For each 16-row repeat of the big cable, it’s pretty easy to remember that the 4-row repeats have cable twists on rows 1, 5, 9, and 13 and the 8-row repeats have twists on rows 1 and 9. Each cable motif is symmetrical, and that makes everything easier to memorize as well.

And lastly, I separate motifs with markers, and that keeps me in line so that I don’t go wild with one cable and accidentally keep extending it into the next cable’s territory. 😉

Aside: my stitch markers are lovely hand made rings purchased from Spindle Cat Studio on Etsy. I’ve made mention of these markers before but it bears repeating. These are by far my favorite stitch markers: there are no rough edges or splits in the rings to catch on the yarn and while they are nicely slim, they stand out so I can easily see them. There are lots of great little knitting doodads for sale at Spindle Cat Studio. If you need a holiday gift for a special knitter, this would be a good place to find something special!

Quick Knit Flower Frenzy

I was sent another great book to review: Quick Knit Flower Frenzy, available to purchase from Annie’s Crafts here.

It is available in both hardcopy and in electronic format. This 50-page booklet has patterns for a number of different flower projects. If you go to the link above, you can view photos of all the different projects. One of the things I really like about this book is that there is a step-by-step tutorial for each project, complete with nice clear photos.

I love how this is done. It is so much easier to learn visually, I think, than by reading a pattern.

Who’d like my review copy? 🙂

To be entered in a drawing to receive my review copy, leave a comment on this blog post by 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, Sunday December 2. I’ll select a comment using the Random Number Generator and send the booklet to that commenter.

Thanks for all the nice comments on my Aran Jacket. It was a fun project to knit, and a fairly quick one, being worsted weight yarn and size 8 needles. So I decided my next project would be at a finer gauge. Immediate gratification is fun, but so are long-haul projects.

I am once again feeding my Cormo obsession, this time with the sportweight woolen-spun (in the dark grey colorway). Here’s what I have so far:

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you will see that I’m doing another Aran design, and in fact, it is another jacket. And it is jam-packed with cables! 😀

Moss stitch and cables knit at a fine gauge make fr slow going — but a lot of fun. And even though there are a bunch of different cables here, they are all fairly easy to memorize — the largest one is a 16-row repeat, and the others are 4 and 8-row repeats. So I have the pattern memorized and do not need to refer to the charts I worked up. (I’m not following a pattern — this is my own concoction.)

If the cropped look is not right for you, you could easily lengthen some of the designs.

There’s colorwork, texture, and lace.

Most of the projects n the book are knit at a fairly large gauge, so I think they’d be pretty quick to knit. And would make a great holiday gift for a trendy teen or young woman. Or whip something up for yourself to wear to holiday parties.

Who’d like my review copy?

To be entered into the drawing to receive my copy, please leave a comment on this blog post by 11:00am Eastern time on Wednesday, November 28, 2012. I’ll draw a comment at random to receive the book.

This is One + One: Hats: 30 Projects from Just Two Skeins by Iris Schreier. It contains 30 patterns for a range of very cute hats by 20 different designers, each of which take only 2 skeins of yarns. The hats use a variety of techniques — they range from simple knit/purl combos, to lace, to texture, to colorwork.

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